Reporters lack of memory infuriates veterans

If you are a reporter you need to know that veterans stopped trusting most of you a long time ago. It doesn't seem to matter to most on your side but it matters to veterans.

Sure you can come up with a great headline about troubles veterans have been facing everyday but the problem is none of it is new. None of you have been assigned stories to report on felt facts mattered.

News companies all over the country jump on the VA claims and how veterans are not taken care of but veterans lived with all of it that last time you reported on it and before that and before that.

On this site alone reports go back to 2008. I am one person. It took me minutes to look up past reports in my own files.

Here are some headlines:

VA’s order Thursday to its 57 regional offices to stop shredding documents after veterans’ claims materials were found in piles of paper waiting to be destroyed.

The policy comes as the VA continues to investigate improper shredding at a St. Petersburg veterans benefits office and 56 other regional offices in nearly every state. The policy calls for the appointment of a records control team in Washington, D.C., to oversee the handling of documents. It also would lead to the hiring of records officers in each benefits office to do the same on a local level. And before shredding any document, two VA employees, including a supervisor, would have to sign off, according to a draft of the policy obtained by the St. Petersburg Times on Friday. The policy comes after the discovery last month of nearly 500 veterans' claims documents improperly set aside for shredding in 41 VA benefits offices.

A high-ranking U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs administrator from Guilderland has been placed on paid leave in the wake of an investigation into his office. Joseph Collorafi was suspended last month as chief of veterans affairs at the New York City regional VA office, said Keith Thompson, acting director of the office. The investigation revealed that someone in the regional office intentionally entered claim documents from veterans with incorrect dates — called "backdating" — into an internal database, VA spokeswoman Alison Aikele said Wednesday. "They would make it look like they were processing claims faster than they really were," said Aikele, who works in Washington, D.C. Changing the dates made it appear that the management was not "severely underperforming," according to Aikele. She said the leadership of the office in Manhattan was replaced and the individuals who left would not be returning. She maintained that no veterans were affected by the backdating..

Veterans Benefits Office Mistakes Cost Veterans Time and Money

More than 400,000 veterans are awaiting decisions on disability claims they filed with the Veterans Affairs Department, and roughly one-quarter of those have waited more than half a year.

Social Security Administration staffs are grappling with more than 600,000 disability claims.

Regional service centers at the Homeland Security Department’s Citizenship and Immigration Services are buried under more than 1 million citizenship applications.

And the Food and Drug Administration is more than a decade from inspecting every foreign pharmaceutical plant it is obliged by law to inspect.

Poor planning by agency leaders and underfunding by Congress created these debilitating backlogs that may take years to resolve, according to federal officials, legislators and watchdog groups.

At the start of the Bush administration in 2001, VA had more than 400,000 pending claims for disability ratings, which determine a service-disabled veteran’s employability and disability benefits. The department made progress reducing that number: By 2003, the backlog was down to around 250,000.

Those reports were from 2008! Any clue how much veterans and families have suffered in the last 6 years needlessly?

I have over 22,0000 post to search from. How many does your news group have? If you don't know how to search, ask someone because the excuse of it takes too much time won't work.
Everything has been happening for far too long because as soon as Congress claims to be doing something, you guys walk away as if they did. The fact is, veterans and families blame reporters as much as we blame congress. THEY ARE IN CHARGE OF THE BUDGET AND MAKING SURE PEOPLE DO THEIR JOBS! How many committees are not being held accountable by you? How many times have members of congress voted against veterans at the same time they pretend they care during election time?

Do you want a juicy story that will get more readers? Then take the real scandal and report on it. The worst contributor to politicians getting away with all of this are other reporters not doing their jobs. They write a great story now but failed to look up the facts so no one reminds the public of when their politician voted against what veterans need or refresh their memories on promises made years ago that never happened.
We've seen it all over the country as more and more reporters jump on the trouble at the VA as if veterans have not been facing the same problems for decades. What is wrong with you? Do they matter or not?